In Wren-designed St Clement Danes church (1682) an inscribed brass plate marks Dr Johnson’s pew and, outside, his statue (1910) appropriately gazes down Fleet Street.
The last Gothic public building in London (1868) defines the end of Fleet Street and the beginning of the Strand, and links its legal neighbours.
Architect Horace Jones designed this replacement of Wren’s Temple Bar in 1880. It signifies the City’s boundary with Westminster and caps statues of Victoria, and Albert with a City dragon.
Also known as St Dunstan’s because its sign showed the saint tweaking the devil’s nose, this hostelry was famous as the home of the Apollo Club where Ben Jonson presided.
In the first London Directory (1677) Blanchard & Child at the Marygold, figure conspicuously. A Marygold in gilt on a green ground is still to be seen hanging above the bank.
A gateway attributed to Wren (1684) leads to the sometime homes of Doctor Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith and Charles Lamb and to the glory of Middle Temple Hall (1572) closely associated with Shakespeare.
Wren’s Middle Temple Gateway (1684) in Fleet Street leads to this majestic Hall (1562-72) where, in 1602, Shakespeare is thought to have directed Twelfth Night.
This imposing City branch of the Bank of England is testimony to Fleet Street’s importance as a bank and insurance area during the nineteenth century.
Built in a neo-renaissance style in 1883 in an area once renowned for its pawnbrokers, a copy of sculptor Grandi’s statue of Kaled from Byron’s poem Lara adorns the grandiose exterior.
The Goslings were stationers until a partnership with goldsmith Henry Pinckney in 1650 established the bank with Pinckney’s three squirrels sign, close by St Dunstan’s church.
Gosling’s solid silver bank sign of three squirrels helped to endorse Fleet Street’s position as one of London’s major banking areas in the early 1670s. It is today owned by Barclays bank.
A cock is an old English word for a tap in a barrel, so this famous alehouse where Pepys enjoyed himself “mightily”, is well-named.
The stately 1830s frontage of Britain’s oldest private bank, founded here in 1690 when banks and insurance companies rather than printing and publishing were associated with Fleet Street.
Hoare’s bank now covers the site of The Mitre, one of Dr Johnston’s Fleet Street retreats. Careful observers can detect indicators of its exact presence.
First recorded in 1185, St Dunstan’s was unusually re-aligned north to south by John Shaw in 1833 following Fleet Street widening. Stained glass commemorates Izaak Walton, author of The Compleat Angler.
‘Under the dyall’ of this famous 1671 clock by Thomas Harrys (remodelled 1738) (the first London clock with a minute hand) was where booksellers in St Dunstan’s churchyard noted their addresses.
The statue of Elizabeth 1 in the church’s east porch once decorated old Newgate, and is the oldest surviving statue of an English monarch (1586).
This unmarked symbol hidden in this once-famous, much-reduced Fleet Street courtyard recalls that in a Wren-designed building, the Royal Society met between 1710 and 1780.
The home of the world’s best-known lexicographer, Dr Johnson. Following the publication in 1755 of his famous dictionary, the promotion of English as a world language gathered apace.
The great man would be familiar with much of the surroundings that represent his life here (1748-59). In this late-Stuart building’s garret, Johnson’s dictionary was compiled.
Dr Johnson’s Society of Arts plaque, the only one of its kind in the City, is a richly deserved addition to his famous working household.
The fame of this Elizabethan tavern is unsurpassed in Fleet Street. Close associations with Dr Johnson, Dickens, Thackerey, Tennyson and Ben Jonson confirm its unique status.
The Corn Law of 1804 protected landowners’ profits by imposing a duty on imported corn that led to high bread prices. In 1837 John Bright toured the country advocating Corn Law reform and with others including Richard Cobden MP convinced Robert Peel’s Conservative government to pass a new Corn Law in 1846 that reduced duty on oats, barley and wheat.
A notable reminder of Fleet Street’s many pubs and hostelries, the foundation of this stuccoed post-fire house is recorded as being set out by Peter Mills in 1667-8.
Thomas Power O’Connor began his journalistic career in Dublin. He moved to London in 1870 and became an Irish Nationalist MP in 1880. He promoted a convivial, informal style of reporting known as New Journalism.
Now the nerve centre of Goldman Sachs’ UK empire, the Daily Telegraph’s neo-Greco-Egyptian frontage (1929) is another decorous facade redolent of Fleet Street’s once all-powerful, newspaper-publishing industry.
The Daily Express building (1930) symbolizes the modern expansion of English into print and defines a very different streetscape to the street’s medieval narrow frontages.
This plaque also should commemorate Rachel Beer, the first woman to run a national newspaper and simultaneously, serve as editor of the Observer and The Sunday Times.
From birth in his father’s tailor’s shop to Secretary of the Navy and President of the Royal Society, this bland plaque records the life of the restoration’s greatest bibliophile and diarist.
Sir Edwin Lutyens designed Reuters’ HQ in 1935 fully respecting nearby St Bride’s. His double-height entrance is crowned by The Herald, a bronze figure set in a deep circular window.
Fleet Street’s dreaming spire and Christopher Wren’s tallest steeple (226ft), St Bride has dominated the street’s history since Bridewell, a holy spring, was discovered nearby.
The view of Fleet Street that most clearly indicates its time-honoured link to the City of London, crowned by Wren’s dome of St Paul’s.
